| Shepherd |
Those believers, whose faith is to rely on the truth of the
Christian history, rest their assent on a written report made by
eye-witnesses; which report the various Churches and sects, jealous of
one another, took care to preserve genuine and uncorrupted, at least
in all material points, and all the religious writers in every age
since have amply attested. |
A divine of the present day who shall undertake the demonstration of the
truth of Christianity by external evidences, or historically, must not
content himself with assuming or asserting this. He must either prove
it; or prove that such proof is not necessary. I myself should be quite
satisfied if I proved the former position in respect to the fourth
Gospel, and showed that the evidence of the other three was equivalent
to a record by an eye-witness: which would not be at all inconsistent
with my contending at the same time for the authenticity of the first
Gospel, or rather for the Catholic interpretation of the title-words
Greek: Katà Matthaion
see previous image
as the more probable opinion, which a sound
divine will neither abandon nor overload, neither place it in the
foundation, nor on the other hand suffer it to be extruded from the
wall. Believe me, there is great, very great, danger in these broad
unqualified assertions that Skelton deals in. Even though the balance of
evidence should be on his side, yet the inquirer will be unfavourably
affected by the numerous doubts and difficulties which an acquaintance
with the more modern works of Biblical criticism will pour upon him, and
for which his mind is wholly unprepared. To meet with a far weaker
evidence than we had taken it for granted we were to find, gives the
same shake to the mind, that missing a stair gives to the body.
Ib. p. 243.
| Temp. |
ou, Mr. Dechaine, seem to forget that God is just; and you,
Mr. Shepherd, that he is merciful |
| Dechaine |
I insist, that, as God is merciful, he will forgive. |
| Shepherd |
And I insist, that, as he is just, he will punish. |
| Temp. |
Pray Mr. Dechaine, are you able, upon the Deistical scheme to
rid yourself of this difficulty? |
| Dechaine |
I see no difficulty in it at all. God gives us laws only for
our good, and will never suffer those laws to become a snare to us,
and the occasion of our eternal misery. |
Here is the
cardo
! The man of sense asserts that it is necessary for
the good of all, that a code of laws should exist, while yet it is
impossible that all should at all times be obeyed by each person: but
what is impossible cannot be required. Nevertheless, it may be required
that no
iota
of any one of these laws should be wilfully and
deliberately transgressed, nor is there any one for the transgression of
which the transgressor must not hold himself punishable. "And yet" (says
our man of sense,) "what may not be said of any one point, or any one
moment, cannot be denied of the collective agency of a whole life, or
any considerable section of it. Here we find ourselves constrained by
our best feelings to praise or condemn, to reward or punish, according
as a great predominance of acts of obedience or disobedience, and a
continued love of the better, or the lusting after the worst, manifests
the maxim (
regula maxima
), the radical will and proper character of
the individual. So parents judge of their children; so schoolmasters of
their scholars; so friends of friends, and even so will God judge his
creatures, if we are to trust in our common sense, or believe the
repeated declarations in the Old Testament." And now I should be glad to
hear any satisfactory
sensible
reply to this, or any answer that does
not fly higher than 'sense' can follow, and pierce into "the thick
clouds" of decried metaphysics! For no fair reply can be imagined, but
one which would find the root of the moral evil, the true
Greek: ponaerón
in this very impossibility.
Ib. p. 249.
| Cunningham |
But how does all this discourse about sacrifices and the
natural light show that your faith does not ascribe injustice to God
in putting an innocent person to death for the transgressions of the
guilty? |
| Shepherd |
Was Christ innocent? |
| Cunningham |
He was without sin. |
| Shepherd |
And he was put to death by the appointment and
predetermination of God? |
| Cunningham |
The Jews put him to death. |
| Shepherd |
Do not evade the question. Was he not the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world? Was he not so delivered by the
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, that the Jews, having
taken him, by wicked hands crucified and slew him? |
| Cunningham |
And what then? |
| Shepherd |
Nothing; but that you are to answer, as well as I, for saying
that God predetermined the death of this only innocent person. |
I am less pleased with this volume than with any of the preceding. Ask
your own heart and conscience whether (for instance,) they are satisfied
with this defence
duri per durius
: or whether frightening a modest
query into silence by perverting it into an accusation of the Almighty,
by virtue of a conclusion borrowed from the Calvinistic theory of
Predestination, is not more in the spirit of Job's comforters, than
becomes a minister of the Apostolic Church of England and Ireland? Such
arguments are but edge-tools at the safest, but more often they may
rather be likened to the two-edged blade of Parysatis's knife, the one
of which was poisoned. Leave them to Calvin, or those who dare
appropriate Calvin's words, that "God's absolute will is the only rule
of his justice;"—thus dividing the divine attributes. Yet Calvin
himself distinguishes the hidden from the revealed God, even as the
Greek Fathers distinguished the
Greek: thélaema Theou
the absolute
ground of all being, from the
Greek: Boulàe tou Theou
see previous image
as the cause
and disposing providence of all existence.
But I disapprove of the plan and spirit of this work, (Deism Revealed.)
The cold-hearted, worldly-minded, cunning Deist, or the coarse sensual
Infidel, is of all men the least likely to be converted; and the
conscientious, inquiring, though misled and perplexed, Sceptic will
throw aside a book at once, as not applicable to his case, which treats
every doubt as a crime, and supposes that there is no doubt at all
possible but in a bad heart and from wicked wishes. Compare this with
St. Paul's language concerning the Jews.
So again, pp. 225, &c. of this volume. Do not the plainest intuitions of
our moral and rational being confirm the positions here attributed to
the Deist, Dechaine? Are they not the same by which Melancthon
de-Calvinized, at least de-Augustinized, the heroic Luther;— those
which constitute one of the only two essential differences between the
Augsburg Confession and the Calvinistic Articles of Faith? And can
anything be more flittery and special-pleading than Skelton's
objections? And again, p. 507, "and that prayer which he (Tindal) is
reported to have used a little before his death, 'If there is a God, I
desire he may have mercy on me;'"—was it Christian-like to publish and
circulate a blind report—so improbable and disgusting, as to demand the
strongest and most unsuspicious testimony for its reception?
Ib. p. 268.
| Shepherd |
Pray, Mr. Dechaine, if a person, whom you knew to be an honest
and clear-sighted man, should solemnly assure you he saw a dead man
restored to life, what would you think of his testimony? |
| Dechaine |
As I could not possibly have as strong an assurance of his
honesty, clear-sightedness, and penetration, as of the great
improbability of the fact, I should not believe him. |
| Shepherd |
Well; it is true he might be deceived himself, or intend to
impose on you. But in case ten such persons should all, at different
times, confirm the same report, how would this affect you? |
There is one inconvenience, not to say danger, in this argument of Mr.
Shepherd's; namely, that of its not standing in the same force, when it
comes to be repeated in the particular miraculous facts in support of
which it is adduced.
Ib. p. 281.
No other ancient book can be so well proved to have been the work of
the author it is now ascribed to, as every book of the New Testament
can be proved to have been written by him whose name it hath all along
borne.
This is true to the full extent that the defence of the divinity of our
religion needs, or perhaps permits, and I see no advantage gained by
asserting more. I must lose all power of distinction, before I can
affirm that the genuineness of the first Gospel,—that in its present
form it was written by Matthew, or is a literal translation of a Gospel
written by him,—rests on as strong external evidence as Luke's, or on
as strong internal evidence as St. John's. Sufficient that the evidence
greatly preponderates in its favor.
The complete Works of the late Rev. Philip Skelton, Rector
of Fintona. 6. vols. 8vo. London, 1824.
Ed.
See South's Works, vol. iii. p. 500. Clarendon edit. 1823
—
Ed.
But it will be proper to observe, that it strikes directly
at the very root of Revelation, which cannot possibly give any other
evidence of itself, as the dictate of God, but what must be drawn from
miracles, wrought to prove the divine mission of those who publish it to
the world.
The Editor is not aware of the existence of the Essay here
mentioned. But see for the distinction of the
Ecclesia
and
Enclesia
,
the Church and State, 3rd edit.—
Ed.
On Predestination, as far as p. 445.
Contents / Index
Notes on Andrew Fuller's Clavinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared1
1807.
Letter III. p. 38.
They (the Jews) did not deny that to be God's own Son was to be equal
with the Father, nor did they allege that such an equality would
destroy the divine unity: a thought of this kind never seems to have
occurred to their minds.
In so truly excellent a book as this is, I regret that this position
should rest on an assertion. The equality of Christ would not, indeed,
destroy the unity of God the Father, considered as one Person: but,
unless we presume the Jews in question acquainted with the great truth
of the Tri-unity, we must admit that it would be considered as implying
Ditheism. Now that some among the Jews had made very near approaches,
though blended with errors, to the doctrine taught in John, c. i., we
can prove from the writings of Philo;—and the Socinians can never prove
that these Jews did not know at least of the doctrine of their schools
concerning the only-begotten Word—
Greek: Lógos monogenáes
see previous image
— not as
an attribute, much less as an abstraction or personification—but as a
distinct
Hypostasis
Greek: symphysikáe
:-and hence it might be shown
that their offence was that the carpenter's son, the Galilean, should
call himself the
Greek: Theòs phanerós.
This might have been rendered
more than probable by the concluding sentence of Christ's answer to the
disciples of John;—
and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended
in me
(Luke vii. 23.); which appears to have no adequate or even
tolerable meaning, unless in reference to the passage in Isaiah, (lxi.
1, 2.) prophesying that Jehovah himself would come among them, and do
the things which our Saviour states himself to have done. Thus, too, I
regret that the answer of our Lord, (John x. 34-36.) being one of the
imagined strong-holds of the Socinians, should not have been more fully
cleared up. I doubt not that Fuller's is a true interpretation; and that
no other is consistent with our Lord's various other declarations. But
the words in and by themselves admit a more plausible misinterpretation
than is elsewhere the case of Socinian displanations. In short, I think
both passages would have been better deferred to a further part of the
work.
Let me add that a mighty and comparatively new argument against the
Socinians may be most unanswerably deduced from this reply of our
Lord's, even were it considered as a mere
argumentum ad
homines
:—namely, that it was not his Messiahship that so offended the
Jews, but his Sonship; otherwise, our Saviour's language would have
neither force, motive, or object. "Even were I no more than the Messiah,
in your meanest conceptions of that character, yet after what I have
done before your eyes, nothing but malignant hearts could have prevented
you from adopting a milder interpretation of my words, when in your own
Scriptures there exists a precedent that so much more than merely
justifies me." And this I believe to be the meaning of the words as
intended to be understood by the Jews in question; though, doubtless,
Fuller's sense exists
implicite
. No candid person would ever call it
an evasion, to prove the injustice and malignity of an accuser even from
his own grounds:—"You charge me falsely; but even were your charge
true, namely, that I am a mere man, and yet call myself the Son of God,
still it would not follow that I have been guilty of blasphemy." But as
understood by the modern Unicists, it would verily, verily, be an
evasive ambiguity, most unworthy of Christian belief concerning his
Saviour. Common charity would have demanded of him to have said:— "I am
a mere man: I do not pretend to be more; but I used the words in analogy
to the words,
Ye are as Gods
; and I have a right to do so: for though
a mere man, I am the great Prophet and Messenger which Moses promised
you."
Letter V. p. 72.
If Dr. Priestley had formed his estimate of human virtue by that great
standard which requires love to God with all the heart, soul, mind,
and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves,—instead of representing
men by nature as having "more virtue than vice,"—he must have
acknowledged with the Scripture, that the whole world lieth in
wickedness—that every thought and imagination of their heart is only
evil continually—and that there is none of them that doeth good, no
not one.
To this the Unicists would answer, that by
the whole world
is meant
all the worldly-minded;—no matter in how direct opposition to half a
score other texts! "One text at a time!" sufficient for the day is the
evil thereof!—and in this way they go on pulling out hair by hair from
the horse's tail, (say rather, dreaming that they do so,) and then
conclude with a shout that the horse never had a tail! For why? This
hair is not a tail, nor that, nor the third, and so on to the very last;
and how can all do what none of all does?—Ridiculous as this is, it is
a fair image of Socinian logic. Thank God, their plucking out is a mere
fancy;—and the sole miserable reality is the bare rump which they call
their religion;— but that is the ape's own growth.
Ib. p. 77.
First, that all punishments are designed for the good of the whole,
and less or corrective punishments for the good of the offender, is
admitted. * * God never inflicts punishment for the sake of punishing.
This is not,
Greek: hôs émoige dokei
sufficiently guarded. That all
punishments work for the good of the whole, and that the good of the
whole is included in God's design, I admit: but that this is the sole
cause, and the sole justification of divine punishment, I cannot, I dare
not, concede;— because I should thus deny the essential evil of guilt,
and its inherent incompatibility with the presence of a Being of
infinite holiness. Now, exclusion from God implies the sum and utmost of
punishment; and this would follow from the very essence of guilt and
holiness, independently of example, consequence, or circumstance.
Letter VI. p. 90.
(The systems compared as to their tendency to promote morality in
general.)
I have hitherto made no objection to, no remark on, any one part of this
Letter; for I object to the whole—not as Calvinism, but—as what Calvin
would have recoiled from. How was it that so good and shrewd a man as
Andrew Fuller should not have seen, that the difference between a
Calvinist and a Priestleyan Materialist-Necessitarian consists in
this:—The former not only believes a will, but that it is equivalent to
the
ego ipse
, to the actual self, in every moral agent; though he
believes that in human nature it is an enslaved, because a corrupt,
will. In denying free will to the unregenerated he no more denies will,
than in asserting the poor negroes in the West Indies to be slaves I
deny them to be men. Now the latter, the Priestleyan, uses the word
will,—not for any real, distinct, correspondent power, but,—for the
mere result and aggregate of fibres, motions, and sensations; in short,
it is a mere generic term with him, just as when we say, the main
current in a river.
Now by not adverting to this, and alas! misled by Jonathan Edwards's
book, Fuller has hidden from himself and his readers the damnable nature
of the doctrine—not of necessity (for that in its highest sense is
identical with perfect freedom; they are definitions each of the other);
but—of extraneous compulsion. O! even this is not adequate to the
monstrosity of the thought. A denial of all agency;—or an assertion of
a world of agents that never act, but are always acted upon, and yet
without any one being that acts;—this is the hybrid of Death and Sin,
which throughout this letter is treated so amicably! Another fearful
mistake, and which is the ground of the former, lies in conceding to the
Materialist,
explicite et implicite
, that the
Greek: noúmenon
the
intelligibile
, the
ipseitas super sensibilis
, of guilt is in time,
and of time, and, consequently, a mechanism of cause and effect;—in
other words, in confounding the
Greek: phainómena, tà rhéonta, tà màe óntôs ónta
—all which belong to time, and cannot be even thought of
except as effects necessarily predetermined by the precedent causes,
(themselves in their turn effects of other causes),— with the
transsensual ground or actual power.
After such admissions, no other possible defence can be made for
Calvinism or any other
ism
than the wretched recrimination: "Why,
yours, Dr. Priestley, is just as bad!"—Yea, and no wonder:—for in
essentials both are the same. But there was no reason for Fuller's
meddling with the subject at all,—metaphysically, I mean.
Ib. p. 95.
If the unconditionality of election render it unfriendly to virtue, it
must be upon the supposition of that view of things, "which attributes
more to God, and less to man," having such ascendancy; which is the
very reverse of what Dr. Priestley elsewhere teaches, and that in the
same performance.
But in both systems, as Fuller has erroneously stated his own, man is
annihilated. There is neither more nor less; it is all God; all, all are
but
Deus infinite modificatus
:—in brief, both systems are not
Spinosism, for no other reason than that the logic and logical
consequency of 10 Fullers + 10 X 10 Dr. Priestleys, piled on each other,
would not reach the calf of Spinoza's leg. Both systems of necessity
lead to Spinosism, nay, to all the horrible consequences attributed to
it by Spinoza's enemies. O, why did Andrew Fuller quit the high vantage
ground of notorious facts, plain durable common sense, and express
Scripture, to delve in the dark in order to countermine mines under a
spot, on which he had no business to have wall, tent, temple, or even
standing-ground!
The Calvinistic and Socinian Systems examined and compared,
as to their moral tendency; in a series of Letters addressed to the
friends of vital and practical religion; especially those amongst
Protestant Dissenters. By Andrew Fuller. Market Harborough. 1793.
Contents / Index
Notes on Whitaker's Origin of Arianism Disclosed1
1810.
Chap. I. 4. p. 30.
Making himself equal with God.
Whoever reads the four verses (John v. 16-19,) attentively, judging of
the meaning of each part by the context, must needs, I think, see that
the
Greek: íson heautòn poiôn tòn Theô
(18) refers,—not to the
Greek: paterá ídion élege tòn Theòn
(18) or the
Greek: ho patáer mou
(17), but—to the
Greek: ergázetai, kagô ergázomai
(17). The 19th
verse, which is directly called Jesus' reply, takes no notice whatever
of the
Greek: ho patáer mou
(17), but consists wholly of a
justification of the
Greek: kagô ergázomai
.
1803.
The above was written many years ago. I still think the remark
plausible, though I should not now express myself so positively. I
imagined the Jews to mean: "he has evidently used the words
Greek: ho patáer mou
—not in the sense in which all good men may use them,
but—in a literal sense, because by the words that followed,
Greek: ergázetai, kagô ergázomai
he makes himself equal to God." To justify
these words seemed to me to be the purport of Christ's reply.
Chap. II. 1. p. 34.
Greek: (Philôn)—perì mèn oun tà theia kaì pátria matháemata, póson te kaì paelíkon eisenáenektai pónon, érgô pasi daelos kaì perì tà philósopha dè kaì eleuthéria taes éxôthen paideías oiós tis aen, oudèn dei légein hóti kaì málista tàen katà Plátôna kaì Pythagóran ezaelôkôs agôgàen, diénegken ápantas toùs kath' heautòn, historeitai.see previous image
Philo's acquaintance with the doctrines of the heathens was known only
by historical report to Eusebius; while the writings of Philo
displayed his knowledge in the religion of the Jews.
Strange comment. Might I not, after having spoken of Dun Scotus's works,
say;—"he is reported to have surpassed all his contemporaries in
subtlety of logic:"—yet still mean no other works than those before
mentioned? Are not Philo's works full of, crowded with, Platonic and
Pythagorean philosophy? Eusebius knew from his works that he was a great
Platonic scholar; but that he was greater than any other man of his age,
he could only learn from report or history. That Virgil is a great poet
I know from his poems; but that he was the greatest of the Augustan age,
I must learn from Quinctilian and others.
Ib. p. 35.
Philo and the author of the Wisdom of Solomon,—(or rather, perhaps,
authors; for the first ten chapters form a complete work of
themselves,)—were both Cabalistico-Platonizing Jews of Alexandria. As
far as, being such, they must agree, so far they do agree; and as widely
as such men could differ, do they differ. Not only the style of the
Wisdom of Solomon is generically different from Philo's,—so much so
that I should deem it a free translation from a Hebrew original,—but
also in all the
minutiæ
of traditional history and dogma it
contradicts Philo. Philo attributes the creation of man to angels; and
they infused the evil principle through their own imperfections. In the
Book of Wisdom, God created man spotless, and the Devil tempting him
occasioned the Fall. So the whole account of the plagues of Egypt
differs as widely as possible, even to absolute contradiction. The
origin of idolatry is explained altogether differently by Philo, and by
the Book of Wisdom. In short, so unsupported is the tradition that many
have supposed an elder Philo as the author. That the second and third
chapters allude to Christ is a groundless hypothesis. The
just man
is
called
the son of God
, Jehovah,
Greek: pais Kyrión
;—but Christ's
specific title which was deemed blasphemous by the Jews, was
Ben
Elohim
,
Greek: uhiòs tou Theou
;—and the fancy that Philo was a
Christian in heart, but dared not openly profess himself such, is too
absurd. Why no traces in his latest work, or those of his middle age?
Why not the least variation in his religious or philosophical creeds in
his latter works, written long after the resurrection, from those
composed by him before, or a few years after, Christ's birth? Some of
Philo's earlier works must have been written when our Lord was in his
infancy, or at least boyhood.
In short, just take all those passages of Philo which most closely
resemble others in the Wisdom of Solomon, and contain the same or nearly
the same thoughts, and write them in opposite columns, and no doubt will
remain that Philo was not the composer of the Book of Wisdom. Philo
subtle, and with long involved periods knit together by logical
connectives: the Book of Wisdom sententious, full of parallelisms,
assertory and Hebraistic throughout. It was either composed by a man who
tried to Hebraize the Greek, or, if a translator, by one who tried to
Greecise the Hebraisms of his original—not to disguise or hide
them—but only so as to prevent them from repelling or misleading the
Greek reader. The different use of the Greek particles in the Wisdom of
Solomon, and in the works of Philo, is sufficient to confute the
hypothesis of Philo being the author. As little could it have been
written by a Christian. For it could not have been a Christian of
Palestine, from the overflowing Alexandrine Platonism;—nor a Christian
at all; for it contradicts the doctrine of the resurrection of the body,
and in no wise connects any redemptory or sacrificial virtue with the
death of his